These days I can’t help but feel like Frank Black, the tragic, glum-faced hero in Chris Carter’s classic TV series Millennium.

In the series, Frank is a retired FBI profiler obsessed with protecting his daughter Jordan from the world’s evils. In his mission to rid the planet of serial killers and mass murderers, he was swayed into joining The Millennium Group, a secret society of criminal investigators allied with the FBI, only to find out later that the group has been corrupted by the very evil it is fighting.

It is a depressing series, and it got canceled after three seasons — proof positive that even serial killer-obsessed America has only a certain level of tolerance for the deeply morbid and the utterly bleak.

If there’s one thing I learned about that program, it’s that the fight against evil is almost always a lost cause.

I remember a friend who justified his being a gun freak to me in 2001 by noting the number of nuts out there who can kill me or my loved ones just because they can and can get away with it, or at most get a mere slap-on-the-wrist courtesy of our inept justice system. His talk left me dumbfounded. If only I had a credit card back then, I would’ve gone straight to Hahn in Ali Mall for a Remington M597 after that conversation.

Why not? It’s better to go down fighting, as they say in war.

Every time I look at my family, I am gripped with the disturbing conclusion that we are indeed at the mercy of the Jason Ivlers and Andal Ampatuans of this world. That unarmed, we are nothing but clueless little mice in the same cage with the snake just waiting to be swallowed. Preys waiting for the predator.

Fight fire with fire. Something must be done to level the playing field.

I’ve a credit card now, and Cubao is just a ride away from where I live and work, and my head is full of gunpowder as I try to come to terms with the vicious reality outside growing more vicious with every passing day.